The head of the Defence Force says women who meet physical standards for the front line are good enough for the job, despite criticism of a plan to open up all combat roles to females.

The Federal Government yesterday announced women will be allowed to serve in all frontline combat roles within five years.

At the moment women are excluded from 7 per cent of all positions on the basis of their sex.

Defence Force Chief David Hurley has told ABC's Lateline that some members of the Australian military will not agree with allowing women on the front line.

General Hurley says jobs should be awarded based on merit not gender.

"I think we're going to find a variety of reactions amongst the members of the ADF - there will be those who won't agree with it, those who will strongly support it," he said.

"Then there'll be simply some who will say they cannot physically do it.

"To those people we say, it is all about setting physical standards that if you achieve them, you can do the job. Move on with it."

General Hurley says the armed forces will gain more from capable women joining the front line than excluding them because of their gender.

"If women out there want to undertake these types of employment, they've got their talents," he said.

"They will bring more to the organisation than we will lose."

General Hurley says it will take time to transition women into frontline roles.

"If women come in today for example and wanted to go to infantry well it's nearly a 12-month journey before you get there and that just brings you to say private level," he said.

"We also need to build rank structures so that might be looking at women who want to move from current employments to these new employments, we need to train them up as well, so it takes a bit of time to build those sort of support structures."

"The big issue they don't appear to be willing to address is the risk of disproportionate casualties," ADA spokesman Neil James said.

"Someone, one day, is going to have to stand up and face the people of Australia and explain why we're killing our female diggers in larger numbers than our male diggers unless we do this very carefully."

'Tokenism'

Retired Major General Jim Molan says the move is "tokenism" and is sceptical about women being involved in hand to hand combat.

"I just wonder if society understands this decision, because every commentator I've heard today thinks that this is just about women on the front line," he said.

"This is just about the kind of jobs that women are doing at the moment in Afghanistan. Well it's not.

"This is about women going into units which are optimised for killing at close quarters."

Major General Molan says no-one knows whether putting women into such situations is a good idea.

"We've had 10,000 years of socialising young men in killing at close quarters and we do it relatively well. It's very hard to do it but we do it relatively well," he said.

"We have only a few examples of socialising women to kill at close quarters. All those have failed so far. No real defence force in the world has ever tried this before."

We have only a few examples of socialising women to kill at close quarters. All those have failed so far. No real defence force in the world has ever tried this before.

Retired Major General Jim Molan

The retired general dismissed the examples used by the Government that both New Zealand and Canada have women serving on the front line.

"Name one big battle that New Zealand has been in in the last 50 years? Name one big battle that Canada has been in in which women have been in the infantry?" he said.

"Fifteen years ago the Canadians tried it. They tried to get women soldiers and they were unable to do it.

"So it's going to be an interesting experiment over five years, and is this the most important thing in defence? It seems to me that we're really into tokenism at the moment."

Major General Molan says there are more important things for the Government to concentrate on than using the Defence Force as a "social laboratory".

"Well frankly I think he doesn't know what's going on with the Canadian armed forces," he said.

"I was recently in Canada and I was advised of this company commander who was with Task Force Kandahar, as I understand it, assigned by ISAF (Internal Security Assistance Force) for the security detail for Kandahar and this major, female major, was in charge of a company and did the job extremely well," he said.

"I was advised of that by the senior defence people in Canada. It wasn't something which came out of the ether or from any third source, it came directly from the Canadian armed forces."

Mr Snowdon says the Defence Force should allow the process to run its course.

"I think it's very important that we allow the process to bed down and I think we should allow the opportunity for women to have a go at these jobs," he said.

"And if they've got the capacity, the willingness, the physical capacity and the psychological aptitude then why shouldn't they do them?"